As the Civil War begins, Lydia Sensabaugh, a young widow, tries to scratch out a living on her worn-out Virginia farm. She’s helped by a hired man and a servant girl, but she’s also surrounded by heinous neighbors. One of them, Parnell Carswell, captures freed men and drives them across Lydia’s land to a dock where they are shipped south and sold. As the war winds on, Carswell becomes a profiteer and demands that Lydia let him use her barn to store contraband.

Lydia opposes slavery but supports the South — until she meets a Union officer, Simon Morse. First he appropriates her horse for the army. Later he replaces it. Through letters the two fall in love, something that does not escape the wrath of Lydia’s Secessionist neighbors.

“Into Enemy Arms,” a tale of love that links both North and South, is a departure for Colorado author Rex Burns. Known for his highly acclaimed mysteries of Denver detective Gabe Wager — he is an Edgar Award winner — Burns is the author of “The Avenging Angel,” which was turned into a movie starring Charles Bronson.

This novel is set in a Virginia Eastern Shore Peninsula where historically, residents were torn between their loyalties to the Union and to the South. Many actually voted to remain in the Union. Burns draws on this division in crafting a novel that is filled with details of the Civil War. When Morse is injured and recuperating in a Washington, D.C., hospital, for instance, he is nursed by Walt Whitman. Burns has done a prodigious amount of research, and his descriptions of wartime Washington make you feel you’re walking the hot, crowded streets of the nation’s capital.

SynergEbooks

“Pop-Out Girl” by Irene Woodbury

“Pop-Out Girl”

By Irene Woodbury, SynergEbooks

Jen Moats works for Stripper Grams in Las Vegas as a pop-out girl — you know, one of those scantily clad lovelies who jump out of giant cakes. She is happily in love with a California high-tech guy, with hopes of marriage. Then her former boyfriend, Zane, is paroled from prison and shows up, ready to resume their relationship. He won’t take no for an answer and kidnaps Jen, drives her to Reno, where under threat of harm to her mother (and a gun), she is forced to marry him.

Jen manages to escape but not until after she is drugged and raped, and Zane goes on the lam. Still, he’s ever present. One night he attempts to murder the boyfriend but shoots the man’s boss, Matt, instead.

This is where things get complicated. Matt, it seems, was engaged to Jen’s mother, Brandi, who ran off four days before the wedding. An other-side-of-the-tracks girl, Brandi couldn’t deal with the disdain of Matt’s wealthy family. Unbeknown to either Brandi or Matt, she is pregnant, and she vows Matt will never find out he has a daughter — until now.

“The Pop-Out Girl” is a romantic romp through Las Vegas by Denver writer Irene Woodbury. The author leads readers through the high and low spots of Vegas, the expensive hotels and nightclubs to the greasy spoons, where both Brandi and Jen top their waffles with catsup instead of syrup. Despite the threat of violence that Zane poses and all the complicated relationships, “The Pop-Out Girl” is a light-hearted tale of love lost and found and maybe lost again.

Penguin Press

“Quiet Until the Thaw” by Alexandra Fuller

“Quiet Until the Thaw”

By Alexandra Fuller, Penguin Press

Rick Overlooking Horse and You Choose Watson are Northern Plains Indian cousins raised by their grandmother. Rick goes off to Vietnam to fight and is horribly wounded, while You Choose Watson is a draft dodger. He changes his name to You Choose What Son, becomes a thug, and eventually runs for tribal chairman.

Sounds like a book filled with angst and resentment of the white man. Well, actually it is, but “Quiet Until the Thaw” is so funny and quirky that it tells its tale with insight and humor. The grandmother, Mina Overlooking Horse, for instance, keeps a winter count that shows the two boys. In the first one, in 1944, the year the cousins are born, she has the number 216. The next year, the figure is reduced by 12. The numbers represent the months left until she is rid of her grandsons.

Rick Overlooking Horse returns to the rez and become a recluse, living in the traditional way, while as tribal chairman, You Choose Watson (when his father was when asked by the mother to name the infant, he replied, “You choose,”) raids the tribal funds and is sent off to prison.

Meanwhile, Rick Overlooking Horse has adopted twins with the aid of an Indian woman, Le-a (pronounced Lee-dash-a), and the cycle seems ready to repeat itself.

“Quiet Until the Thaw” is an offbeat look at life among the Northern Plains Indians, a story that makes you chuckle as you think.